Airfreight in Scandinavia goes paper free

As founding members of IATA e-freight program, SAS Cargo has operated e-freight trade lane between Gothenburg and Hong Kong for more than a year. The trade lane Hong Kong ’ Gothenburg and Stockholm went operational during September 2008. Now the Scandinavian carrier is ready to reap the benefit of the experience accumulated, when the e-freight concept spreads to cover airfreight to and from Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

The first test shipments have already been sent and Norway is now open for paper free shipments on domestic, import, export and transfer.’ Sweden has been paper free since 2007, and Swedish domestic trade lanes are now in focus for development. In Denmark the authorities have a technical issue in relation to exports, but we will be handling import and transfers as e-freight in Denmark within a very short time, says Product Manager Steen Otterstr’m from SAS Cargo.

The paper free shipments are organized in close cooperation with national customs authorities and IATA Forwarders like DHL, Schenker, Geodis Wilson, K’hne & Nagel, and Trust Forwarding. And Trust Forwarding sees tremendous advantages in the implementation of e-freight in Scandinavia.

In Norway alone Trust is processing 3.000 air waybills a month, and estimates claim that in average each air waybill is handled 60 times during its life span, so obviously electronic air waybills represent a tremendous improvement of our work processes. The paper work will become much more simple and efficient, when all information needed will be available online, says General Manager in Trust Forwarding, Robert Skoog.

According to Skoog the customers will also experience advantages from e-freight. He expects the quality to improve when typing errors have been eliminated and air waybills cannot be mislaid. Furthermore he sees an opportunity for improved feedback as well as quality and performance measures in the interface between IATA’s e-freight project and Cargo 2000. With e-freight the transport flow becomes more transparent to all parties involved.

Trust Forwarding has worked with e-freight on the lanes from Gothenburg and Stockholm to Hong Kong for more than a year, and over the last few weeks, paperless shipments have been introduced on domestic Norwegian routes and Swedish routes are in progress for getting operational. The plan is to open new e-freight lanes consecutively, so that all Trust shipments to, from and within Scandinavia will be paperless before the end of the year.